Mrs Corey was returning from Upper Burma, India, where her husband was working as a superintendant of the English Oil Company. She was traveling with Mrs J. Frank Karnes, boarding in Southampton.

Mary probably spent the last day of the Titanic in the second class library. Lawrence Beesley wrote:

"Close beside me-so near I cannot avoid hearing scraps of their conversations-are two American ladies, both dressed in white, young, probably friends only: one had been to India and is returning by way of England, the other is a schoolteacher in America, a graceful girl with a ditinguished air heightened by a pair of pince-nez."

Mary Corey, who was eight months pregnant, and Claire Karnes both died in the disaster.